Nuke commanders say they can refuse illegal order

[Renegade]

I think you're wistfully overstating our ability to locate all the PLS's, not to mention the ability of Tomahawks to effectively neutralize a hardened PLS. It would be an exceedingly risky tactic to hope you got them all, while leaving the command structure intact who preemptively launched one.

Maybe not, but we gotta try. Firing a single tit-for-tat Nuke at a city sure wont get many of them.

Now if you said do all that while simultaneously launching a nuke from a SSBN or B2, I might agree with you. It doesn't matter when or how, but anyone who launches a preemptive nuclear strike against the United States, must be eliminated ASAFP. No ifs ands or buts.

Well, a single tit-for-tat Nuke at a city sure wont eliminate him. As I said before, I am sure he would be willing to trade 5-10 of his cities for 5-10 of ours.

[chuckman]

Well, a single tit-for-tat Nuke at a city sure wont eliminate him. As I said before, I am sure he would be willing to trade 5-10 of his cities for 5-10 of ours.

It sure wouldn't be tit-for-tat. If he nuked one of our cities, it would be the last thing he would ever nuke. I do not think a small-yield tactical nuke is overkill on our part; nor would be the awesome and terrible conventional munitions deployed at the same time.

IF he nuked one of our cities, Guam, whatever, and we had a limited and measured response, it may or may not play well to many world actors, but there are some it would be seen as passive and weak, and it is those folks I would be concerned about gaining a nuclear arsenal.

[Averageman]

I'm guessing that if an immediate and overwhelming response was not nuclear a lot of lesser bad players on the world stage would join in wherever and however they could.
IE, San Francisco sucks up a nuke and US Embassies in Paris, Rome and Berlin are bombed. Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan fight human wave attacks, etc.

[ABNAK]

I am sure he would be willing to trade 5-10 of his cities for 5-10 of ours.

Well one good thing: we could ensure that NK no longer has a starvation problem! Why, we did it for humanitarian reasons!